Architecture Reading from the Political Thoughts' Perspective

Abstract

Upheavals which occurred in western architecture in terms of different buildings, external and internal facades, decorations and garnitures, public and private spaces, materialfrom the ancient until the end of the 20th century, represent the undeniable role of politics and political thoughts in these upheavals and dynamics. Accordingly, the effects of politics can be observed at different levels including the instrumental use of owners of political, economic, and religious power from architecture for expressing and representing their own power via constructing outstanding buildings such as palaces, temples, triumphal arches, and churches. In addition, the advent of new forms of public spaces, the appearance of buildings for public offerings such as exhibitions and museums and the separation of public and private spaces have been offerings of enlightenment and humanism, liberalism, and capitalism. Due to the direct intervention of governments in the domain construction because of damages caused by wars of the first half of the 20th century, more emphasis have been put on the function of buildings as spaces and places of occurring modern life and homogenous architectural style was prescribed for realizing a comprehensive international identity. At last, with the collapse of metanarrative of modernism and rise of postmodernism, pluralism, decentralization, infinity of senses, the rejection of hierarchy and flexibility in architecture of the late 20th century can be observed and investigated. Therefore, the present study is to investigate the relationship between politics and architecture in the framework of interdisciplinary studies.

Keywords

• politics
• architecture
• interdisciplinary studies
• modernism
• postmodernism